Tag Archives: Italy
Monti lashes out at Germany ahead of summit – FT.com
Posted on 26. Jun, 2012 by Harvey Sax.
Monti lashes out at Germany ahead of summit
By Guy Dinmore and Giulia Segreti in Rome and Peter Spiegel in Brussels
©Reuters
Mario Monti has set the stage for a tough fight with Germany at the EU summit this week, insisting that he will continue to push Italy’s proposal to use eurozone bailout funds in an attempt to stabilise financial markets.
Italy’s technocratic prime minister’s frustration with Germany surfaced in a combative speech to parliament, saying he would not go to Brussels to “rubber-stamp” pre-written documents and was ready to extend the two-day summit until Sunday night if needed to reach agreements before markets reopen on Monday.
Spain IS Greece After All: Here Are The Main Outstanding Items Following The Spanish Bailout | ZeroHedge
Posted on 09. Jun, 2012 by Harvey Sax.
Spain IS Greece After All: Here Are The Main Outstanding Items Following The Spanish Bailout
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/09/2012 14:52 -0400
Bank Run Bond Bridgewater CDS Creditors European Central Bank Eurozone Germany Greece Gross Domestic Product Ireland Italy National Debt Nationalization Portugal Sovereign Debt
After two years of denials, we finally have the right answer: Spain IS Greece. Only much bigger. So now that the European bailout has moved from Greece, Ireland and Portugal on to the big one, Spain, here are the key outstanding questions.
Soros says Europe has three months to avoid catastrophe
Posted on 03. Jun, 2012 by Harvey Sax.
I don’t pretend to know what’s going to happen but I’ve said many times, the world would be much better off without the euro. For reasons beyond my comprehension, the Europeans seem hell bent on keeping it. Perhaps this speech from George Soros will make it clearer to you.
Remarks at the Festival of Economics, Trento Italy June 2nd
Immediate Solution To Debt Crisis Found: Italian police seize $6 trillion of fake U.S. bonds
Posted on 18. Feb, 2012 by Wilensky.
What started off as a harmless Mafia loan-sharking investigation turned into a rather profitable seizure of $6 trillion worth of forged US Treasury bonds on Friday. Oddly enough, no rally in the treasury market as a result. US officials confirmed that the bonds were not just a misplaced QE 3 and QE 4.
“It began as a investigation into mafia loan-sharking, but gradually expanded as prosecutors used telephone and computer intercepts to unearth evidence of illegal activity surrounding Treasury bonds. The fake securities, worth more than a third of U.S. national debt, were seized in January from a Swiss trust company where they were held in three large trunks.”
“The U.S. Embassy in Rome thanked the Italian authorities and said the forgeries were “an attempt to defraud several Swiss banks”. It said U.S. experts had helped to identify the bonds as fakes. Potenza’s prosecutor Giovanni Colangelo said an international network “in many countries” was behind the forgeries.”
“Italian daily Corriere della Sera said on its website that the criminal network was believed to be interested in acquiring plutonium, citing sources at the prosecutors’ office. Prosecutors said the forgers had hoped to use the fake bonds as collateral to secure loans. The eight men arrested are accused of counterfeiting bonds, credit card forgery, and loan-sharking in the Italian regions of Lombardy, Piedmont, Lazio and Basilicata, police said.”
via Italian police seize $6 trillion of fake U.S. bonds | Reuters.
Staggering images of the Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster
Posted on 18. Jan, 2012 by Wilensky.
Some powerful shots of the crippled vessel were released today by The Guardian.
The rest of the photos can be viewed here
Captiain Francesco Schettino ran the ship aground last weekend. 11 mortalities are confirmed with search efforts still under way to locate the remaining 21 missing passengers.
Parent company Carnival plc. experienced a sharp drop of 16% in share price, but has since climbed back %3.5 to $30.54 a share. Total cost of the disaster is estimated to be in excess of $95 million. While the Costa was insured through at least three separate insurers, there is still a question of how the role Captain Schettino played in causing the wreck will be interpreted in handling the $500+ million in liabilities.
The Mafia Is Now “Italy’s Largest Bank” | ZeroHedge
Posted on 11. Jan, 2012 by Wilensky.
The Mafia Is Now “Italy’s Largest Bank”
Whoever says there are no winners in the European banking crisis apparently has never woken up with a horse’s head in their bed. According to a new report by Italian anti-crime group SOS Impresa, as reported by Reuters, “Organised crime has tightened its grip on the Italian economy during the economic crisis, making the Mafia the country’s biggest “bank” and squeezing the life out of thousands of small firms, according to a report on Tuesday.” You mean kinda like Intesa credit cards demanding a 39.95% APR: we knew we had seen that “life squeezing” thing before somewhere. Of course at least with the mafia you know that it will never rely on fake Libor fixings to pretend it is alive, or need an ECB bailout the next day due to being overly invested in US subprime mortgages (unless of course Goldman’s rolodex stretches even further than we thought possible)..
Read the rest of the article Here
The Week in Resignations.. And It’s Only Wednesday: Urban Outfitters, WebMD, The White House, Swiss National Bank, and Italy
Posted on 11. Jan, 2012 by Wilensky.
Out of the markets and into the midst of both earnings and elections seasons, volatility seems here to stay. Here’s a quick recap of the most recent turnovers in the headlines the past few days, gathered from.. well, everywhere.
Clothing retailer Urban Outfitters Inc. said its Chief Executive Glen Senk resigned:
The company named Chairman and co-founder Richard Hayne as his replacement. Shares of the company fell 12 percent after the bell. They closed at $29.41 on Tuesday on the Nasdaq.via Urban Outfitters CEO resigns | Reuters.
WebMD Chief Executive resigns:
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — WebMD Health Corp. CEO Wayne T. Gattinella has resigned, and the healthcare information services provider said it stopped talking to potential acquirers about a sale of the company. WebMD also said Tuesday it expects 2012 earnings to be “significantly lower” than in 2011 as it faces tough competition and its drug company customers deal with patent expirations.
White House Chief of Staff William Daley resigns; budget chief Jacob Lew fills post:
White House Chief of Staff William M. Daley resigned Monday, a year after taking the job, shaking up the administration’s senior management just as President Obama gears up for what is expected to be a tough reelection campaign.
Wife’s trades sink banker, resigns:
ZURICH—Swiss National Bank Chairman Philipp Hildebrand resigned Monday after emails appeared to undercut his assertion that he knew nothing of a currency trade worth more than $500,000 by his wife last summer.
Italy minister Carlo Malinconico quits over hotel bill:
Italian junior minister Carlo Malinconico has resigned because of his connections with a businessman now being investigated for corruption.
At least part of his bills were allegedly paid for at a five-star hotel in the Tuscan resort of Il Pellicano in 2007 and 2008, newspaper reports said.
Berlusconi under pressure as markets lose patience
Posted on 05. Aug, 2011 by Maxwell Leary.
(Reuters) – Bond markets may be succeeding where political opponents have failed, pushing Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi closer to the exit and opening up fresh uncertainties as Italystruggles to avoid financial disaster.
The spread between yields on 10-year Italian bonds over German Bunds briefly climbed past the equivalent Spanish/German spread on Friday morning, underlining the perception that Italy now poses the major threat to euro zone stability.
Berlusconi’s response to the crisis, blaming international conditions and pledging unspecified measures to boost growth, has fallen flat with markets suddenly focusing on his divided government and longstanding weaknesses in the Italian economy.
Full article available @:
S&P, Moody’s Under Investigation
Posted on 04. Aug, 2011 by Live Trading News.
Italy seized documents of S&P, Moody’s over suspected ‘Anomalous’ fluctuations
Italian prosecutors seized documents at the offices of rating agencies Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s in a probe over suspected “anomalous” fluctuations in Italian share prices, a prosecutor said Thursday.
Italy under fire in widening euro debt crisis
Posted on 02. Aug, 2011 by Maxwell Leary.
(Reuters) – Financial market pressure on Italyintensified on Tuesday, sucking Europe’s second biggest debtor nation deeper into the euro area danger zone and prompting Italian authorities to call emergency talks.
Italian bond yields hit their highest level in the euro’s 11-year lifetime, ominously reaching the same level as Spain’s in a sign that Rome is overtaking Madrid as the main focus of investors’ concern about debt sustainability.
Italy’s stock index fell to its lowest in more than 27 months, dragged down by banks with a heavy exposure to Italian debt. European shares hit a 9-month low amid worries that slowing economic growth will make it even harder to overcome the euro zone’s debt troubles.
“The fear of the market is that the world is going into recession again… and in the euro zone the peripheral markets are the ones that will suffer most,” said Alessandro Giansanti, strategist at ING in Amsterdam.
Full article provided by Reuters @:
Italy’s Burgeoning Debt Crisis Hits Markets Around the Globe – Barrons.com
Posted on 12. Jul, 2011 by Harvey Sax.
Once again, it’s the PIIGS. For the past year, the focus on eurozone’s debt crisis has been on the PIGS — Portugal, Ireland and especially Greece, plus Spain. But the crash in Italy’s bonds has put the second I back in that acronym.
Global markets shuddered in reaction because, in the words of Goldman Sachs Asset Management head Jim O’Neill, “neither the euro area nor possibly the rest of the world can afford a full-blown Italian bond crisis.”
Or as Nomura Securities foreign exchange strategist Jens Nordvig pithily asserts: Italy is too big to bail.
The slide in the prices of Italian government bonds intensified Monday, sending the yield on the 10-year maturating to the highest level since the introduction of the euro in 1999, to 5.75% — -twice the yield on benchmark German bunds. At the same time, prices of Italian bank stocks continued to tumble, sending the iShares MSCI Italy Index exchange-traded fund (ticker: EWI) down over 6% Monday. Since the beginning of May, the U.S.-traded Italy ETF is down 23%, a full-fledged bear market by the popular criterion of a 20% fall.
via Italy’s Burgeoning Debt Crisis Hits Markets Around the Globe – Barrons.com.
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